“It’s an irresistible idea,” says Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and one can only hope that President Bush will embrace it – the idea of using his State of the Union address to launch a major initiative to retain America’s threatened world leadership in science and technology.

Alexander and a bipartisan group of senators, including Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., are preparing to introduce a bill calling for a $10 billion-a-year effort to train more scientists, engineers, and math and science teachers, and to increase federal funding of basic research by 10 percent a year.